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Madagascar: paradise in peril

A fossa, a cat-like mammal unique to the island and Madagascar's largest predator

14 February 2012 • 12:00am

The plane descends from the clouds and I see bald red hills, bright green rice fields, cattle grazing in a shanty town on the edge of a city. Then tarmac, touchdown, dark tropical men pushing a staircase. Giddy with jet fatigue, I step out into gauzy heat and light, not quite believing that I am here at last.

Madagascar. It always sounded so far away and unreachable, like somewhere in a dream. I remember pronouncing its syllables for the first time, sitting in my grandmother's house with a book about the high seas. English pirates sailed here in the 17th and 18th centuries, into the distant reaches of the Indian Ocean where Africans and Indonesians had settled an island nearly three times the size of Britain. The pirates established havens on the coast, raised their children for a few generations and left the skull-and-crossbones carved into their tombstones. Slave-trading kings ruled the interior until the French invaded and colonised.

The faces at the airport show the blending of African and Indonesian bloodlines. None of these people appears to be ugly, and few of them are tall. Random facts swirl through my head at the baggage carousel. The word Madagascar comes from Marco Polo, who misheard the name of Mogadishu, in Somalia, and applied it by mistake to this island 250 miles off the coast of Mozambique. Giant hissing cockroaches live here and lizards that scream. Monkey-like lemurs dance like ballerinas and sing songs of eerie beauty. Eighty per cent of Madagascar's wildlife and plants are found nowhere else. The people are called Malagasy, not Madagascan, and their country is one of the poorest in the world.

My guide is waiting outside the customs hall, the first Malagasy I've ever met, a university-educated man in his early thirties wearing hiking shoes, cargo trousers and an orange T-shirt promoting wildlife conservation. His eyes are kind, and he welcomes me with a smile. 'I am Diary,' he says. His surname is Andrianampoina, and in the Malagasy language this does not qualify as a long or complicated word. The capital city is Antananarivo, and soon we will pass through Ambohimifangritra, not to be confused with Ambatofinandrahana.

'So Mr Richard,' Diary says as the driver leaves the city. 'What is your area of interest in our country? The nature and wildlife? Our culture and customs? The issues we are facing?'

All of it, I say. Everything about your country is interesting to me. He points to the humped cattle with long dewlaps and lyre-shaped horns grazing by the roadside and pulling wooden carts. These are the ubiquitous Madagascar zebu, brought here long ago by African herdsmen and now numbering in the tens of millions. 'We use them for milk, meat and work, but they are also like a bank account everyone can see,' Diary says. 'The more zebu you have, the more wealth and status. To get married you must pay many zebus to your bride's family.'

In my country, we have a different system, I say. The man gets his bride for nothing, but he must pay her if there is a divorce.

'He pays after the marriage is over?' Diary says incredulously. 'But then he gets nothing for his money. I like our system better.'

The landscape is a patchwork of rice paddies and terraced hillsides, denuded of the magnificent forests that once grew here. The air is hazy and tastes of smoke from the fires on the horizon, where traditional slash-and-burn agriculture is consuming yet more forests. In the villages, women wear pink floppy hats, children run in rags, and lorry drivers devour huge bowls of rice and zebu meat at roadside eateries. 'A good Malagasy will eat a kilo of rice a day, more than the Chinese,' Diary says. 'We eat rice for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and drink rice water with our meals.'

Indonesians brought rice to Madagascar some 1,500 years ago, and they came more than 3,500 miles across the Indian Ocean in outrigger canoes to get here, arriving well before the first Africans. The author Jared Diamond has called this migration, 'The single most astonishing fact of human geography in the world.'

The Malagasy today are made up of 18 different tribes all speaking the same approximate language, with a stronger Indonesian influence here in the central highlands, and a stronger African influence on the coasts. Diary's tribe is the Merina, which has long dominated the island from the capital and the surrounding areas. As we drive past some roadside tombs, built of stone like small mausoleums, he says, 'Do you know about our custom of turning the bones?'

Is this when you dig up the dead?

'Yes, every seven years we take our ancestors out of the family tomb and wrap their bones in a fresh silk shroud. People drink rum and play music. They lift up the ancestors and dance with them.'

Do the bodies smell bad?

'Maybe if the liquids are leaking, but it's not a problem. It's very important to us to look after the ancestors because they protect the living. We must keep them happy. Once my grandfather visited as a moth. We dabbed oil on him and said, "Thanks for coming to visit us." Do you find this strange?'

Yes, a little strange. But I would hate to live in a world where everyone thinks like me.

'We have another striking tradition,' he says. 'Grandfathers eat the foreskins of two-year-old boys with bananas. I will eat the foreskins of all my grandsons. It is taboo to throw away part of the body, and by eating the foreskins I will help them become good men.'

Is this tradition practised by all the tribes on the island? 'No,' he says. 'In the south, you can shoot the foreskin out of a gun.'

We drive on through Ambodinifody, a notorious village for witches, and across the River Mongoro, where crocodiles lurk in the water. At dusk, 23 hours after leaving Heathrow, I encounter a towering wall of rainforest by the side of the road as the air fills with bird calls, insect noise, a burping chorus of frogs. We have reached the edge of the island's most famous national park, a place called Andasibe, where we hope to see the indri, a big lemur that sings eerie songs.

That night, horizontal at last in the improbable luxury of the Vakona Forest Lodge, sinking down into a shattered, exhausted sleep, I couldn't help but grin. My God, man, you're in Madagascar! Here at last, in the strange, wonderful land of singing lemurs and foreskin-eaters.

While the French tourists butter their baguettes in the Vakona Lodge restaurant, Diary and I go to work on big bowls of rice cooked with milk, ginger and greens, and topped with grilled zebu meat. 'Eat up, Mr Richard,' he says. 'We will be walking in the forest all day.'

Anything dangerous or unpleasant to look out for, I ask, thinking back to past rainforest experiences in Africa and Latin America.

'Some mosquitoes maybe. If it rains, there will be leeches, but nothing will hurt or kill you here. We are like Africa in many ways, but our wildlife is much more gentle.'

There are no big predators in Madagascar, no dangerous herbivores such as elephants or rhinos, and no venomous snakes. The island broke off and drifted away from east Africa 160 million years ago, long before the first hoofed animals or poisonous snakes appeared. Nearly all the species here evolved in isolation, in a kind of lost world that was unseen by humans until the first Indonesians arrived. They encountered elephant birds that stood 10ft tall and weighed half a ton, but the flightless birds were no match for humans with weapons and soon became extinct.

Apes and monkeys never evolved in Madagascar, but there are more than 70 species of lemur, a snouted tree-dwelling primate that exists nowhere else. There are 238 bird species and 8,000 flowering plants. Chameleons evolved here in fantastic profusion, including one the size of a house cat and another smaller than a thumbnail; all of them can change their colour and swivel their eyeballs in opposite directions. The largest predator is the fossa, a peculiar cat-like mammal that looks like a cross between a puma, a dog and a mongoose.

The strangest creature is the aye-aye. This black nocturnal lemur has a face like a bat, teeth like a beaver, a feathery tail and a long skeletal finger that taps on wood to locate beetle grubs and scoop them out. A few of them live in Andasibe, but Diary says it is almost impossible to see them. 'Unfortunately the aye-aye is very rare and endangered now. I have only seen it once in the wild.'

At the entrance to the park we engage the services of Marie Razafindrasolo, a local woman in green fatigues who has become an expert at leading half-blind, city-deafened tourists such as me through the forest and showing us what we can't see. This is highland rainforest, wonderfully cool and fresh as we set off down the trail. Sunlight falls in shafts through the canopy. Dewdrops glisten on gigantic spiderwebs. Orchids sprout from the limbs and crotches of unfamiliar trees. Brightly coloured birds flit through narrow gaps in the vegetation. This much I can see, but my inexperienced eyes are unable to penetrate the camouflage of the stationary animals that are all around me.

'Look, look, yes, right there,' Marie says, pointing to a bush 6ft from my head. Only then do I see the Parson's chameleon, 2ft long and banded green with a big orange eye. 'And there,' she says. Another Parson's chameleon behind the first one. He unfurls a tongue as long as his body to snag an insect on a neighbouring plant. Diary's eyes are more tuned in than mine, but even he has to follow Marie's finger and study hard before he makes out the woolly lemur asleep in the crook of a tree 60ft away, or the gorgeous young boa constrictor curled up motionless in dappled shade.

An hour deeper in the forest, Marie hears a distant rustling in the treetops. 'Quick, quick,' she says. 'The indri are coming.' She plunges down the side of a ravine through thick vegetation, and Diary and I plunge after her. A few minutes later, we are in perfect position to see a large family of indri come swinging through the trees, extraordinary looking creatures with dog snouts, panda ears, yellow eyes and long fluffy white legs. They keep their torsos vertical as they sail through the air, and the babies cling on to their mothers' backs.

We follow them for an hour or more, as they feed and rest and travel again. Then, with no warning or preamble, they open their muzzles and start wailing their unearthly cries. It sounds something like a humpback whale song blended with a police siren and a saxophone. Up close, the volume is astounding, and their songs carry like drifting dirges through miles of forest.

Marie's four brothers are also forest guides and they are all in communication by mobile phone from different parts of the park. One of them has located some diademed sifaka – smaller lemurs with a fuzzy white crown of fur, a long white tail and golden arms and legs – and he calls through their position and we rush over there. Fantastically agile, they leap sideways with their arms elegantly outstretched like dancers.

Unfortunately, the joys and marvels of visiting Andasibe, and indeed Madagascar in general, come attached to a heavy load of sadness and anguish. Nowhere else on earth has so many unique animals and plants, and nowhere else is environmental destruction so rampant and unchecked. Only three per cent of the island's forests are left, and illegal logging is now rife inside the national parks and reserves, with poor, hungry loggers also hunting rare lemurs for food. The most valuable tree is rosewood, upon which the aye-aye and other lemurs depend, and the market for it is in China, where factories are turning it into reproduction antique furniture for the new bourgeoisie.

The current Malagasy government is heavily implicated in the lucrative trade, which has increased 25-fold since it came to power by coup d'état in 2009. The international community, in protest at the lack of democratic elections, has pulled most of its aid from Madagascar, and this has only made things worse, gutting both conservation and poverty-alleviation projects all across the island.

A deeper problem is that the island's population has doubled since 1990 and is increasing faster than ever. Nowhere in the world have I met nicer people, but their need for firewood, charcoal and land, their farming and herding practices, and their increasingly successful attempts to have seven daughters and seven sons per marriage, have created a catastrophe with no solutions in sight. Already Madagascar is one of the most eroded countries on earth. The topsoil is washing away in red rivers to the sea, and astronauts have reported that Madagascar appears to be bleeding to death.

'Sometimes my heart feels sick when I see what's happening,' Diary says. 'I feel so angry at our politicians and timber barons. Many good people are doing everything they can, but the forest could be gone in 20 years.' As a newcomer to the island, I find my emotions swinging erratically between delight and despair, exhilaration and sorrow. The food, the music, the people I'm meeting and what's left of the forests and the wildlife are all so wonderful, but as the Duke of Edinburgh put it with characteristic brusqueness when he was here, 'This island is committing suicide.'

Back at the airport in Antananarivo, as we shake hands goodbye, Diary pleads, 'Mr Richard, you must tell people in your country to come to Madagascar. We need more tourists to spend money in our parks and make jobs. It's the best hope. Please, Mr Richard, you must tell everyone.'

I fly next to Diego Suarez on the northern coast. Madagascar feels like a different country here, a different continent even. The air is fiercely hot and dry, the people look fully African, and judging by the incidence of men in long shiny robes at the airport, maybe half of them are Muslim.

My new guide is Laurent Jaovita, a lively, good-humoured man of 40 wearing long shorts and hiking boots. His English is limited but he speaks it rapidly and has no problem expressing himself. 'Yes, many Muslims in the north, 40 per cent of the population,' he says, striding off into the car-park with my bag. 'Arab traders were here. They left long ago. Now our Muslims drink more alcohol than Christians. And they have Christmas trees!'

With a driver who speaks no English, we navigate our way south through arid bush on a pitted and potholed highway. On the far horizon, rising out of the plains in faint blue silhouette, is the isolated rainforest massif called Amber Mountain, where we are going. We pass villages without electricity, sanitation or running water, where people of the Antakarana tribe sit outside tiny huts made of sticks or old rusty pieces of tin. 'The huts are very small because they only use them for sleeping,' Laurent says. 'And they go to bed very early because they have no lights or candles. No wonder their families are so big.'

By modern Western standards, these people are incredibly poor, but Laurent, an educated member of the tribe, says they don't feel poor because they have plenty of zebus, no shortage of food and home-brewed beer, and very little knowledge of the outside world. Their homeland has a scorched and barren look, because they set fire to the bush once or twice a year, to bring up tender new shoots of grass for the zebus. 'Oh, they burn so many chameleons and snakes, so many plants where birds are nesting,' Laurent says. 'It's very sad because the zebus don't need this new grass. And the people don't need so many zebus either, but this you cannot explain. This is like telling someone that they have too much money in the bank.'

Limping and lurching down the road towards us comes a fantastically overladen 30-year-old Renault 4. 'This is a country taxi, look how many people inside!' Laurent says excitedly. 'Fifteen! And look, look, always the best-looking woman is sitting next to the driver. And you see the big sacks on the roof? They are full of khat.'

Khat is the narcotic leaf chewed for its stimulating, euphoric effects in Somalia, Djibouti and elsewhere in the Horn of Africa. I didn't know khat was in Madagascar but Laurent says it is all over the north and gaining popularity in the south. He tried it once, disliked the taste, and couldn't stop cleaning his house for several hours afterwards.

Late in the afternoon we reach the khat capital of the north, a surreal little town called Joffreville. Built in lavish colonial style by the French and named after Marshal Joffre, a First World War hero who lived here, the town is now an overgrown dilapidated ruin, grazed by zebus and occupied by khat farmers, dealers and chewers. To make things even more bizarre, we are staying for the next two nights in Marshal Joffre's old mansion on the hill, which has been restored and turned into a boutique hotel by a hip young Frenchman called Hervé.

We spend our days hiking on Amber Mountain, where Laurent's sharp eyes locate innumerable lemurs, chameleons, mongooses and endemic Malagasy birds. Then we walk down through the khat fields, ruined villas and clusters of khat-stoned locals to Hervé's hotel, the Litchi Tree, for expertly mixed drinks and Parisian nightclub music in the black and red cocktail lounge. It strikes me as a thoroughly modern experience, to be a pampered eco-tourist in a rotting old colonial town, where even the local policeman has a bulging wad of khat leaves in his cheek.

Joffreville khat is sold all over the island, according to Laurent. So what happens to the money? Why is everyone living in ruins and wearing ragged clothes? 'If you get money, you buy drinks for everyone until it's gone,' he says. 'Also, people have many relatives and they all need money.' This being Madagascar, all the dealers and stoned people are perfectly amiable and polite to tourists, even when they start drinking in the evenings. Crime here seldom amounts to more than stealing a chicken and trying to blame it on a mongoose.

After Joffreville we take a long rambling road trip deeper into the island. Everywhere we go, the children wave, the women smile and flirt, the men welcome us with politeness and grace. They live in one of the poorest, most corrupt countries on earth, yet they display an obvious pleasure in being alive, and a warm, patient courtesy that is almost unimaginable in modern Britain.

Each village along the way displays its own distinctive handicraft, so we pass the village of brooms, the village of moonshine rum, the villages of kapok pillows, chilli sauce and illegally cut rosewood furniture. The village of sapphires has a raw frontier feel, with stalls and shacks hammered together from scrap lumber. The sapphire mines are less than a mile away, so we walk through the shimmering heat to take a look. Sinewy miners dig the mineshafts with picks and shovels, some of them hundreds of feet deep, and lower themselves down on ropes from homemade windlasses.

When they find sapphires, the miners bring them to a fat man on the main street, who clips away the dark blue coating to reveal the shining gemstones inside. He sells them in bulk to Thai dealers who show up in new black cars, and in time-honoured fashion the miners blow all their money on drink and whores in rough little taverns. These taverns smell revolting, because the favoured bar snack of the miners is a boiled or grilled fruit bat.

Then comes a village called Isessi, meaning 'Place of the SS'. A Waffen SS officer called Schultz arrived here after the Second World War, opened a store, married a local woman and stayed here until his death in 1992, presumably because he was a war criminal. 'We called him the Uncircumcised One, and there was another strange thing about him,' Laurent says. 'He didn't like short people. If you were under one metre six, he would throw you out of his store like this: "Not you! You are the size of a child but your face is old! Out! You are awful!" '

Laurent has a fine talent for mimicry, and seeing him fume like a mad old Nazi is one of the many pleasures of his company. He is also highly intelligent with an extensive knowledge of global current affairs, which he devours through the internet, and he can name the capital cities and presidents of nearly every country in the world, including Turkmenistan, South Ossetia and Lesotho. He wanted to be a journalist but it wasn't possible in the north, so he turned to guiding instead, having learnt the forest as a Scout.

Like Diary, he feels a deep sadness at the dis-appearing natural wonders in Madagascar, and it comes in sudden pangs, undercutting his normally ebullient spirits. Seeing rosewood for sale right outside a national park where it is supposedly protected, or a particularly extensive area of fire scorching, he shakes his head and goes quiet for a while. He, too, wants more tourists to come here, but ultimately he hopes for better protection from a new and better government, and believes the island will be able to muddle through and hang on to most of its parks at least.

In Ankarana National Park, he led me into reeking bat caves, and through an eroded wonderland of sharp limestone pinnacles known as tsingi. The island seemed particularly ancient and marvellous in that forest of stone, where troupes of lemurs came leaping from one pinnacle to the next, pausing to look at us, the young ones very curious to see fellow primates in hats and clothes. And then, in a nearby market, came the blow of seeing peeled lemurs for sale alongside the eels and fruit bats.

There was an almost relentless quality to the daily parade of wonders, curiosities, astonishments, upsets and tragedies. They came so thick and fast, especially towards the end. We saw crabs scuttling sideways in a forest many miles from the ocean. A bird of seven colours. A Muslim swineherd leading his pigs to market. A bottle of rum left next to a human skeleton in a cave. A lemur the size of a mouse, caught in a torch beam.

A Renault 4 taxi with at least 16 people inside came careering towards us, and then flipped on its headlights to announce that it had no brakes. The skies that night convulsed in an almighty thunderstorm, during which at least 100 frogs found their way into my thatch-walled hotel room. In the morning: fresh-squeezed mango juice with peppercorns and a stick of fresh vanilla. At noon, a logging truck full of wood came across an ex-forest blackened by fire to the horizons.

That's Madagascar, so easy to fall in love with, and so quick to break your heart.

Richard Grant travelled with Rainbow Tours and Kenya Airways. A similar 12-night Nature and Nurture Madagascar trip costs from £3,295 per person based on two people sharing (020-7666 1252; rainbowtours.co.uk)